Posted by Steve Price on July 13, 1999 at 16:48:15:
In Reply to: TESTING A THEORY posted by Daniel Deschuyteneer on July 13, 1999 at 15:17:34:
Dear Daniel,
Your math is perfect, but I'm afraid you misunderstood what was meant by a 1 foot opening. Let me clarify. The bag is about 4 feet wide, so there is an opening of the bag itself that is 4 feet, from one edge of the bag to the other. A braided goathair rope is sewn to the lips of this opening. It is sewn down fairly tightly, but about 1 inch is left unsewn every 3 inches (7-8 cm) or so. What I referred to as the "shoelace" rope then goes back and forth across the lips, threading through the openings dcreated by the unsewn parts of the other rope. If you look at the image of the piece you can see the ropes I'm talking about; the shoelace is left very loose for the picture to make its path more clear. The 1 foot opening to which aI referred is that the "shoelace" appears to have been opened repeatedly for about one foot of the length of the bag opening - at least, that's where it's abraded apart.
I doubt that a juval would be filled to anything likea 1 foot thickness; probably 3 or 4 inches is more like it. That would reduce the weight of the contents to about one-third or one-fourth of what you calculated from a 1 foot thickness.
The warps are wool, and are continuous from one the lip of the face to the lip of the back. The cotton is the weft in the white stripes and is the pile in the white pile areas. I don't know how much heavy use these would have been expected to endure, so it's hard to jduge whether they would or would not have used cotton. The fact is that they did use cotton. And, as you note, cotton was used in certain rugs and zileh that you've seen even though it doesn't wear well.
I'm sorry to have caused confusion about the opening, andI hope this helps.
Regards and wish the chickens good luck from me,
Steve Price